Slip  lialbnrf-ABtDna 

Fifth  Avenue 
NEW  YORK 


Affiliated  Hotels: 
under  the  ownership 
of 

Boomer  -  nu  Pont  Properties  Corporation 


The  Bellevue  -  Stratford  .  Philadelphia 
The  Willard  .  .  .  Washington,  D.  C. 
The  Windsor  Montreal 


of 

®t|i>  Halimrf-Aatnna 

By 

EDWARD  HUNGER  FORD 


Illustrations  by 
LOUIS  H.  RUYL 


h 

I  a 

S  5 

*  2 
in 


AVERY 

DURST 


of 

OTalimrf-Aatiirta 

IN  the  spring  of  the  year  1890,  Rumor  went 
through  the  streets  of  New  York  town  whis- 
pering that  William  Waldorf  Astor  was  about 
to  build  a  huge  hotel  upon  the-  site  of  his  house 
at  the  northwest  corner  of  Fifth  Avenue  and 
Thirty-third  Street.  "It  is  to  have  all  of  five 
hundred  rooms,"  whispered  the  .  sly  dame,  ''five 
hundred  rooms,  and  more  than  half  of  them 
with  private  baths."  .  .  .  She  threw  out 
other  hints  as  well  —  of  a  tavern  to  be  built 
with  an  elegance  and  finesse  such  as  neither 
New  York,  nor  any  other  city,  for  that  matter, 
had  yet  known.  "One  certainly  would  expect 
the  Astors  to  do  the  thing  handsomely,"  was 
her  final  shaft. 


William  Waldorf  Astor  had  permitted  the 
idea  of  a  hotel  upon  the  site  of  his  Thirty-third 
Street  house  to  grow  in  his  imagination.  He 
talked  it  over  at  great  length  with  his  estate 
agent,  Abner  Bartlett,  a  man  in  whose  experi- 
ence and  judgment  he  put  large  confidence.  In 
the  hotel  idea  Mr.  Bartlett  had  anticipated  his 
chief.  He  had  both  imagination  and  judgment. 
Both  were  forever  tempered  with  a  vast  sagac- 
ity. Into  his  judgment  there  entered,  even  be- 
fore William  Waldorf  Astor  had  fully  made  up 
his  own  mind,  the  determination  that  a  great 
new  hotel  should  be  built  at  the  Thirty-third 
Street  corner.  One  day  Bartlett  bespoke  that 
determination. 

"I  think  that  we  shall  build  that  hotel,"  he 
said  slowly 


3 


William  Waldorf  Astor  turned  his  glance 
toward  him.  Doubt  still  ruled  him.  He  was  not 
quite  convinced  of  the  wisdom  of  the  project. 

"It  will  never  pay,  there  at  Thirty-third 
Street,"  was  his  reply. 

"Oh,  yes,"  contradicted  Abner  Bartlett.  "I 
have  thought  the  thing  all  out  and  I  am  now 
positive  that  it  will  pay." 

Astor  was  quiet  for  a  few  minutes.  Finally 
he  turned  toward  his  agent,  saying: 

"Have  you  got  a  man  to  look  after  a  house 
like  that,  if  we  should  decide  to  build  it?" 

The  agent  did  not  hesitate. 

"I  have  the  man,"  he  said,  quietly. 

"Who?" 

"That  man  over  in  the  little  Bellevue,  in 
Philadelphia — George  Boldt." 

Bartlett  knew  Boldt.  With  Mrs.  Bartlett,  he 
was  in  the  habit  of  going  occasionally  to  the 
Bellevue  for  a  few  days'  rest  and  vacation. 
Once  Boldt  had  given  up  his  own  suite  just  to 
accommodate  them. 

At  that  time  there  probably  was  nothing  else 
just  like  that  little  Philadelphia  hotel  in  all 
creation;  certainly  not  in  the  United  States. 
It  was  really  a  very  tiny  tavern  indeed,  of  red 
brick — it  possessed  but  thirty-six  sleeping  rooms 
— standing  in  Broad  Street.  With  its  mansard 
roof  it  was  only  four  stories  in  height,  all  told, 
and  it  was  not  until  a  number  of  years  after 
Boldt  took  it  over  that  an  elevator  was  installed 
within  it.  Yet  it  was  a  homey  little  place,  and 
when,  in  1904,  it  was  finally  demolished — upon 
the  completion  of  the  magnificent  Bellevue- 
Stratford  upon  an  adjoining  corner — its  passing 
was  mourned  sincerely  by  whole  generations  of 
old  Philadelphians. 


George  Boldt  was  the  manner  of  man,  then, 
who  was  chosen  to  make  the  operation  of  the 
new  Astor  Hotel — it  soon  was  settled  that  it 


was  to  be  called  the  Waldorf — his  life  work. 
He  accepted  after  consultation  with  his  wife. 
And  plans  were  made  for  the  construction  of 
the  house.  Within  a  few  weeks  after  the  accep- 
tance by  the  Boldts  of  the  new  house,  Henry  J. 
Hardenbergh,  an  architect  who  was  to  have 
considerable  experience  in  the  development  of 
the  modern  hotel  in  New  York,  was  engaged 
upon  its  preliminary  plans.  And  it  was  not 
long  thereafter  before  the^  Astors  moved  out 
of  their  comfortable  red-brick  house  and  the 
wreckers  were  engaged  in  its  demolition. 

In  the  late  summer  of  1891  the  gaunt  steel 
framework  of  the  new  Waldorf  began  to  show 
itself  over  the  edge  of  the  tall,  tight  fence 
which  the  contractors  had  built  about  the  site 
of  the  hotel.  Boldt,  although  never  relinquish- 
ing the  full  control  of  the  Bellevue,  took  the 
house  at  13  West  Thirty-third  Street  (imme- 
diately adjoining  the  Waldorf  site),  not  only 
as  personal  living  quarters,  but  also  as  an  office 
until  the  new  hotel  should  be  finished.  Liter- 
ally he  slept  on  the  job,  when  he  slept  at  all. 
At  no  time  during  the  long  period  of  construc- 
tion was  he  far  from  it.  When  he  did  go  it  was 
either  to  gain  ideas  or  furnishings  for  the  house. 
That  was  long  before  the  day  of  standardization 
in  hotel  furnishings;  years  before  some  efficiency 
genius  was  to  evolve  the  idea  of  rooms  exactly 
alike  on  each  bedroom  floor  of  the  modern 
hostelry,  and  furnished  alike,  down  to  the 
smallest  detail. 

The  original  intention  was  to  have  the  Wal- 
dorf eleven  stories  in  height.  Finally,  in  def- 
erence to  a  request  of  Mrs.  Boldt,  this  was 
increased  to  thirteen  stories.  The  wife  of  the 
proprietor  of  the  new  house  had  a  sort  of  super- 
stitious affection  for  the  number  thirteen.  So 
thirteen  stories  into  the  blue  skies  over  Manhat- 
tan went  the  brand  new  Waldorf.  From  the 
first  the  idea  was  to  create  a  super  tavern  with 
as  little  of  he  typical  hotel  features  in  evidence 


5 


6 


as  was  humanly  possible.  There  were  to  be 
530  rooms,  of  which  some  150  would  be  sleeping- 
rooms.  There  were  to  be  350  private  bath- 
rooms, a  feature  which  alone  made  a  tremend- 
ous impression  upon  the  high-grade  traveling- 
public  of  the  nineties. 

Construction  proceeded  slowly  through  the 
summer  of  1891  and  1892.  In  the  latter  year  it 
was  possible  so  to  enclose  the  uncompleted 
building  as  to  permit  the  decorators  and  the 
furnishings  to  come  into  it.*  But  at  no  time  was 
the  construction  hurried.  Few  large  buildings 
in  New  York  have  ever  been  fabricated  so  delib- 
erately— and  so  thoroughly.  This  was  one  of  the 
few  definite  wishes  of  William  "Waldorf  Astor. 
The  plans  for  the  hotel  having  been  finished,  in 
compliance  with  his  announced  plan,  the  owner 
returned  to  England.  The  few  orders  or  sug- 
gestions that  he  made  in  connection  with  the 
building  of  the  house  were  chiefly  given  by 
cable.  As  far  as  is  known,  he  never  entered  it 
after  its  completion  but  twice,  and  then  but 
for  a  few  minutes  each  time.  He  passed  quickly 
through  its  corridors  and  did  not  lift  his  eyes 
from  the  floor. 

Finally — it  was  a  wintry  day  in  February, 
1893,  when  a  great  banner  was  affixed  to  the 
front  of  the  new  Waldorf.  In  large  black  let- 
ters New  Yorkers  read  upon  it: 

Mr.  Boldt  announces  the  opening  of 
the  Waldorf,  Wednesdav,  March  15, 
1893.    Temporarv  offices'  at  13  West 
Thirty-third  Street. 
The  actual  christening  of  the  original  Wal- 
dorf took  place  on  the  evening  of  the  14th  of 
March.    For  months  it  had  been  anticipated  as 
a  large  social  function.    A  huge  concert,  in  aid 
of  St.  Mary's  Free  Hospital  for  Children  and 
under  the  direction  of  Mrs.   Richard  Irvin, 
formed  the  excuse  for  bringing  a  most  repre- 
sentative group  of  New  Yorkers  to  the  opening 
of  the  new  hotel.    A  dismal  downpour — a  sharp 


spring  rain  was  doing  its  utmost  to  dampen  the 
party — failed  to  keep  away  a  great  throng  of 
folk.  More  than  fifteen  hundred  men  and 
women  attended  the  affair.  The  New  York 
Symphony  Orchestra,  under  the  leadership  of 
Walter  Damrosch,  which  had  been  donated  for 
the  evening  by  Mrs.  AW  K.  Vanderbilt,  was 
the  chief  feature  of  the  program. 

The  state  apartments  were  occupied  for  the 
first  time  on  April  15th — just  thirty  days  after 
the  formal  opening  of  the  house.  A  party  of 
distinguished  Spaniards,  on  their  way  to  the 
World's  Columbian  Exposition  at  Chicago,  were 
housed  in  them.  In  this  group — the  precursor 
of  a  long  line  of  prominent  official  visitors  to 
the  United  States  to  be  entertained  under  the 
hospitable  roof  of  the  Waldorf — were  the  Duke 
and  Duchess  of  Yeragua,  the  Honorable  Chris- 
topher Columbus  y  Aguilera,  the  Honorable 
Charles  Aguilera,  the  Honorable  Maria  del  Pi- 
lar Columbus  y  Aguilera,  the  Marquis  Barbolis 
and  his  son,  the  Honorable  Pedro  Columbus  de 
la  Corda.  Later  came  the  delightful  Princess 
Eulalie  and  her  suite.  On  the  19th  of  April 
this  ducal  party  held  a  reception  in  the  hotel 
which  was  attended  by  a  hundred  of  the  most 
prominent  women  of  New  York,  Washington, 
Baltimore,  Philadelphia  and  Chicago.  It  was 
a  most  elaborate  affair.  Elaborateness  was  a 
peculiar  perquisite  of  the  Waldorf.  It  fairly 
lived  on  pomp  and  ceremony. 


Pomp  and  circumstance.  The  large  Waldorf. 
The  luxurious  Waldorf.  The  glorious  Waldorf. 
How  Xew  York — huge,  calm,  sophisticated  New 
York — gazed  and  gaped  at  the  splendors  of  its 
newest  tavern.  People  flocked  to  it  by  the  hun- 
dreds and  by  the  thousands;  they  engaged  ta- 
bles in  all  of  its  restaurants  days  and  even 
weeks  in  advance.  They  filled  its  sleeping 
rooms.    When  they  could  not  do  any  of  these 


8 


FROM    A    DRAWING    BY   LOUIS    H.  RUVL 


THE  WALDORF-ASTORIA 
Stonding  at  the  Important  Comer  of  Fiftli  Avenue  and 
Thirty-fourth   Street,   it  Dominates  the  Great  Section 
of  New  York  that  Lies  Round  About  It 


9 


tilings  they  just  came — open-eyed — to  return, 
more  open-eyed  than  before.  For  these  last, 
professional  guides  were  engaged;  probably  for 
the  first  time  in  the  history  of  any  hotel.  These 
young  men,  glib  of  tongue  and  pleasing  of  man- 
ner, were  hired  to  direct  strangers  through  the 
hotel  and  to  spare  no  details  of  information  in 
regard  to  it. 

As  the  spring  of  ninety-three  turned  into 
summer,  Boldt  came  to  be  distinctly  worried 
about  the  success  of  his  venture.  A  most  tem- 
peramental man  at  all  times,  he  fell  into  a 
depressed  habit  of  going  to  his  friends  and 
asking  them  if  he  had  not  made  a  mistake  in 
going  into  such  a  whale  of  an  enterprise. 
Would  he  not  have  done  far  better  if  he  had 
remained  content  with  the  comfortable  earnings 
of  the  little  Bellevue?  Assuredly  it  had  been  a 
mistake  opening  the  house  almost  at  the  thresh- 
old of  oncoming  summer.  Then,  too,  the  Chi- 
cago fair  was  not  going  as  well  as  had  been 
anticipated.  The  great  flow  of  European  visi- 
tors that  it  was  to  bring  into  America — and 
who  could  reasonably  be  counted  on  for  stays 
in  New  York,  both  coming  and  going — failed 
completely  to  materialize.  And  the  shadow  of 
oncoming  hard  times — the  disastrous  panic  of 
1893 — -was  already  upon  the  land.  No  wonder 
that  Boldt  worried.  And  worried  long  and 
worried  late.  On  one  Sunday  of  that  depress- 
ing summer  of  1893  there  were  forty  guests  in 
the  house,  and  970  servants  upon  the  payroll 
that  day.    He  had  excellent  cause  to  worry. 

Vet  Boldt  never  dismissed  a  single  servant 
or  in  any  May  lowered  his  standard  of  service, 
lie  was  a  stickler  for  details.  Himself  an  un- 
tiring worker,  he  expected  nothing  less  of  his 
associates.  Seemingly  he  was  on  the  job  twenty- 
four  hours  a,  day;  actually  he  was  generally  on 
duty  from  nine  o'clock  in  the  morning  until 
about  three  o'clock  the  next  morning.  Some- 
times in  the  early  evening  he  would  retire  to 


10 


his  apartments  for  a  quiet  game  or  two  of  soli- 
taire or  to  read — he  was  an  inveterate  reader. 
But  he  was  always  down  upon  the  offiee  floor 
before  the  theatre  crowd  came  pouring  in. 

In  no  department  of  the  hotel — not  even  the 
office — did  Boldt  show  a  keener  interest  than  in 
the  cuisine.  Here  his  stickling  for  detail  became 
almost  a  passion.  He  was  particularly  keen  that 
the  waiter — the  contact  point  between  the  hotel 
kitchen  and  the  hotel  patron — should  be  as  near- 
ly one  hundred  per  cent,  perfect  as  was  human- 
ly possible.  It  was  his  endeavor  from  the  outset 
that  every  man  engaged  for  the  service  of  his 
dining-rooms  should  be  able  to  speak  French, 
German  and  English.  The  idea  of  a  really 
international  hotel  always  had  a  tremendous 
appeal  for  him.  He  is  quoted  at  that  early 
day  as  saying: 

"I  intend  to  have  my  force  so  selected  that  a 
man  from  Berlin  or  Paris  con  come  to  the 
Waldorf  fresh  from  the  steamer  and  have  his 
orders  perfectly  understood." 

In  this  phase  of  his  life  work  Boldt  was  par- 
ticularly fortunate  in  having  a  great  assistant — 
the  maitre  el'hotel,  Oscar  Tschirky.  And  be- 
cause Oscar's  fame  as  an  hotelier  is  hardly  less 
than  that  of  his  great  chief,  I  may  be  permitted 
to  halt  this  narrative  long  enough  for  a  brief 
paragraph  or  two  about  him. 


This  Swiss-American — he  is  a  native  of  the 
Canton  of  Neufchatel — is  today  one  of  the 
notable  figures  of  New  York.  Not  to  know 
Oscar,  of  the  Waldorf,  is  really  not  to  know 
New  York.  He  has  been  with  the  house  since 
the  day  of  its  opening,  coming  to  it  from  the 
old  Delmonico's  on  Madison  Square,  where  for 
half  a  dozen  years  or  more  before  the  arrival  of 
Mr.  Boldt  in  New  York,  he  had  been  engaged 
in  the  business  of  making  friends  for  himself. 


11 


12 


And  Oscar,  too,  has  a  powerful  faculty  for 
making  friends. 

To  organize  a  kitchen  and  dining-room  force 
for  a  five-hundred-room  hotel,  that  aimed  at 
the  outset  to  be  a  world-leader  in  each  detail 
of  its  service,  was  no  small  task.  Added  to 
that  was  the  fact— unfortunate,  but  true — that 
the  Waldorf  kitchen  at  the  beginning  was  badly 
designed  for  the  great  loads  that  were  to  be 
thrust  upon  it. 

The  Waldorf  pioneered,  truly.  There  were 
few  precedents  by  which  its  architects  and  fur- 
nishers might  be  guided.  It  was  a  part — and  a 
very  difficult  part— of  their  task  to  establish 
precedents,  to  help  in  that  bygone  day  to  win 
for  the  house  her  title  of  "the  mother  of  the 
modern  hotel."  But  how  perplexing  it  all  was — 
away  back  there  in  1893.  No  skilled  or  experi- 
enced efficiency  hotel  engineer  to  say:  so  many 
square  feet  of  space  for  the  kitchen,  so  many 
for  the  laundry,  so  many  for  refrigeration — all 
the  rest  of  it.  Instead,  Boldt  and  Oscar  and 
the  late  Tom  Hilliard,  the  general  manager  of 
the  house  (promoted  after  a  number  of  years 
of  valuable  service  at  the  Bellevue),  were  puz- 
zling their  shrewd  heads  nearly  off,  trying  to 
plan  efficient  working  quarters — and  then  find- 
ing in  that  fearful  summer  that  much  of  their 
work  had  to  be  entirely  done  over. 

In  the  winter  of  1893  the  Waldorf  really  be- 
gan to  come  into  its  own.  Not  only  had  New 
York  caught  on"  to  the  real  loveliness — back  of 
all  the  sheer  opulence  and  magnificence — of  its 
new  toy,  but  the  rest  of  the  country  had  fol- 
lowed likewise.  Boldt  was  never  an  advertiser. 
He  was  not  well  schooled  in  the  fine  art  of  pub- 
licity as  it  is  practised  today.  Yet  he  was  far 
from  being  a  mere  beginner  in  these  things.  He 
had  a  real  knowledge  of  psychology,  of  men 
and  of  the  workings  of  their  minds.  And  he 
believed  firmly  that,  in  the  long  run,  the  very 
best  advertisement  for  his  wonderfid  new  hotel 


13 


would  be  the  unvarying  high  quality  of  its  serv- 
ice. Upon  the  things  that  went  to  make  this 
quality,  he  never  ceased  to  hammer.  Perfection 
of  hotel-keeping — was  his  god.  To  that  great 
god  he  made  his  constant  prayers. 

Yet,  large  as  was  the  Waldorf,  it  was  not 
nearly  large  enough.  The  demands  upon  its 
hospitality  grew  more  pressing  each  month. 
New  York  now  was  coming  uptown  by  leaps 
and  by  bounds.  Fifth  Avenue  as  a  residence 
thoroughfare — between  Twelfth  Street  and 
Fiftieth,  at  least — was  gone.  In  place  of  the  old 
brown-stone  and  red-brick  fronts  were  coming 
shops — shops  of  high  degree  and  of  wonderful 
loveliness  in  all  of  their  offerings— but  shops 
none  the  less.  Yet  they  but  added  to  the  eclat 
and  to  the  prestige  of  the  Waldorf,  and  to  the 
terrific  demands  for  rooms,  particularly  in  the 
more  crowded  seasons  of  the  year.  To  be  a 
room-clerk  in  the  old  Thirty-third  Street  office 
during  Horse  Show  week  or  that  of  the  begin- 
ning of  the  opera  season  was  no  sinecure.  One 
had  to  have  the  wit  and  the  diplomacy  of  a  Tal- 
leyrand or  a  Disraeli — or  both  of  them  together. 
In  addition  to  all  of  this  there  was  an  increasing 
demand  upon  the  hotel  for  formal  social  func- 
tions of  almost  every  conceivable  sort.  Mr. 
Bagby  was  organizing  his  Monday  Morning 
Musicales;  dining  clubs,  such  as  the  Southern 
Society  and  that  of  the  Ohio,  and  the  Sphinx 
Club  were  fairly  springing  into  existence,  with 
the  superior  cuisine  of  the  Waldorf  always  as 
the  largest  excuse  for  their  being. 

Temporary  relief  was  gained  in  1895  when 
five  or  six  small  red-brick  residences  in  Thirty- 
third  Street,  just  to  the  west,  were  torn  down 
and  a  five-story  extension  to  the  main  building 
(so  planned  in  its  foundations  and  construction 
framework  as  to  be  capable  of  bearing  many 
more  floors,  if  it  ever  should  become  necessary) 
was  begun.  To  make  room  for  this  wing,  Mr. 
Boldt  sacrificed  the  original  "No.  13,"  in  which 


14 


he  had  dwelt  prior  to  the  completion  of  the 
hotel,  and  which  since  then  had  been  occupied 
by  the  cigar  and  wine  importation  company 
which  he  organized  under  its  name.  In  its 
place  came  a  new  "No.  13,"  however — a  com- 
plete private  residence  built  into  the  hotel 
structure  so  that  its  separate  identity  could 
never  be  suspected,  even  from  the  small  street 
door  which  served  as  its  own  individual  en- 
trance. This  home  Mr.  Boldt  occupied  for  a 
number  of  years — up  to  the  completion  of  an 
even  larger  one  in  Thirty-seventh  Street,  just 
back  of  Tiffany's. 

It  was  in  the  new  ballroom  of  the  wing  exten- 
sion that  the  Bradley-Martins  gave  their  great 
party,  and  because  it  was  such  a  very  great 
party  as  to  cause  the  room  itself  to  be  known 
as  the  Bradley-Martin  room,  it  is  quite  worth 
another  interruption  to  this  narrative.  It  was 
given  on  the  evening  of  February  10,  1897.  To 
say  that  New  York  was  agog  over  the  affair  is 
putting  the  matter  very  lightly  indeed.  In  pub- 
lic interest  it  completely  overshadowed  both  the 
Lexow  investigation  and  the  steadily  growing 
Cuban  trouble.  Some  eight  or  nine  hundred 
selected  folk  were  bidden  to  pass  the  carefully 
guarded  portals;  and  the  list  of  invited  per- 
sonages for  this  event  for  a  long  time  remained 
the  accepted  list  of  those  who  were  really  in  the 
inner  circles  of  New  York  society.  Three  bands 
supplied  the  music  for  the  occasion — two  in  the 
new  ballroom  and  the  other  in  the  old.  The 
ball  began  with  four  quadrilles.  Afterwards 
there  followed  a  cotillion,  led  by  Elisha  Dyer, 
Jr.,  dancing  with  Mrs.  Bradley-Martin,  and  a 
supper.  The  party  did  not  end  until  long  after 
five  o'clock  in  the  morning.  But  when  it  was 
done,  the  place  of  the  Waldorf  in  the  sun  of 
Xew  York's  society  was  firmly  fixed. 

From  the  hour  that  he  had  first  opened  his 
Xew  York  hotel,  Boldt  had  worried  incessantly 


15 


16 


about  what  might  appear  upon  some  imme- 
diately adjoining  corner.  The  entire  neighbor- 
hood was  in  the  course  of  a  rapid  transition. 
The  old  buildings  around  about  were  coming- 
down,  right  and  left.  Boldt  felt  that  any  day 
any  one  of  them  might  be  replaced  by  a  huge 
hotel  which  would  appear  a^s  an  immediate  rival 
to  his  Waldorf.  His  particular  worries  he  re- 
served for  the  Thirty-fourth  Street  corner,  still 
occupied  by  the  John  Jacob  Astor  residence. 
Slowly  there  had  grown  in  his  imaginative  mind 
a  hope  that  some  day  that  site  might  be  occu- 
pied by  a  near  twin  to  the  Waldorf,  which 
might  be  operated  in  conjunction  with  it.  But 
common  sense  did  its  best  to  dash  that  hope. 
The  long-standing  estrangement  between  the 
two  branches  of  the  Astor  family  seemed  to 
make  such  a  possibility  entirely  out  of  the  ques- 
tion. Yet  disquieting  rumors  continued  to  come 
to  Boldt  about  the  future  of  that  plot  imme- 
diately adjoining  his  hotel.  Once  he  heard  that 
an  apartment  house  would  go  upon  it,  again  . 
that  it  would  hold  a  department  store,  finally 
that  a  hotel  would  presently  appear  upon  that 
corner.  This  last  disquieted  the  proprietor  of 
the  Waldorf  most  of  all.  He  made  immediate 
efforts  to  accomplish  the  impossible — to  bring 
the  warring  houses  of  Astor  into  accord,  in  this 
matter  at  least. 

The  John  Jacob  Astor  branch  was  also  rep- 
resented by  an  estate  agent,  Mr.  George  F.  Pea- 
body.  The  eventual  bringing  together  of  the 
branches  was  accomplished  by  Mr.  Bartlett, 
working  in  consultation  with  Mr.  Peabody.  It 
was  then  definitely  decided  to  build  a  hotel  on 
the  John  Jacob  Astor  property,  to  be  called 
the  Astoria  and  to  be  operated  jointly  with  the 
Waldorf.  Mr.  Hardenbergh,  who  had  designed 
the  original  house,  was  asked  to  prepare  the 
plans  for  it.  And  it  was  discovered  that  the 
foresight  of  George  C.  Boldt  had  caused  the 
main  floor  of  the  Waldorf  to  be  set  high  enoiigh 

17 


IS 


above  the  Thirty-third  Street  level  to  come  just 
even  with  the  pavement  of  Thirty-fourth  Street 
(there  is  a  considerable  variation  between  the 
levels  of  these  two  parallel  cross  streets.)  You 
hardly  ever  could  beat  the  proprietor  of  the 
Waldorf  on  long-distance  vision. 

The  John  Jacob  Astor  estate,  while  finally 
agreeing  to  the  joint  hotel  plan,  held  tightly  to 
its  rights.  The  Astoria  was  not  only  to  be  built 
entirely  separate  from  the  Waldorf  in  every 
way,  shape  and  manner,  but  Boldt  was  required 
to  put  up  a  bond  that  would  provide  for  funds 
for  the  immediate  closing  by  brick  and  stone 
of  every  opening  in  the  division  wall  that  sepa- 
rated them.  This  was  done.  And  in  the  spring 
of  1895  the  demolition  of  John  Jacob  Astor's 
house  was  begun.  And  but  a  few  months  later 
the  construction  of  a  sixteen-story  hotel 
followed.   

By  the  summer  of  1896  the  Astoria  was  well 
upon  its  way  toward  completion.  The  details 
of  its  magnificence  were  beginning  to  seep  out 
into  New  York.  More  than  the  original  Wal- 
dorf ever  had  been,  this  house  was  to  be  recog- 
nized as  a  semi-public  institution.  Its  very 
coming  seemed  to  mark  a  distinctive  change  in 
the  urban  civilization  of  America.  Sharp  ob- 
servers of  our  social  customs  began  to  perceive 
a  definite  tendency  on  the  part  of  well-to-do 
folk  to  make  their  real  homes  in  the  country, 
coming  to  New  York  for  but  three  or  four  or 
possibly  five  or  six  months  in  the  winter.  To 
cater  to  these  folk  was  the  special  desire  of  the 
Waldorf-Astoria.  Gradually  it  was  to  become 
slightly  less  a  hotel  for  the  mere  feeding  and 
housing  of  travelers  and  considerably  more  a 
semi-public  institution  designed  for  furnishing 
the  prosperous  residents  of  the  New  York  met- 
ropolitan district  with  all  the  luxuries  of  urban 
life.  With  this  in  view,  great  attention  was 
given  to  the  planning  of  the  ballrooms  and  other 
apartments  of  public  assemblage  in  the  Astoria. 


19 


The  Astor  Gallery  alone — in  the  style  of  Louis 
XV  and  an  exact  replica  of  the  historic  Crystal 
Room  at  the  Soubise  Palace,  Paris — would  have 
been  a  great  acquisition  of  itself,  for  any  hotel. 
Yet  it  was  overshadowed  by  the  main  ballroom 
adjoining,  which  remains  to  this  day,  after  all 
these  years,  the  most  sumptuous  apartment  of 
its  sort  in  New  York,  if  not  indeed  in  all  Amer- 
ica. To  paint  its  lesser  murals  Turner  and 
Low  and  Simmons  were  summoned  by  Colonel 
Astor;  for  its  giant  ceiling  the  genius  of  E.  H. 
Blashfield  was  employed.  The  results  speak 
for  themselves. 

The  semi-public  character  of  the  new  Astoria 
was  reflected  also  in  its  spacious  rooms  upon  the 
ground  floor.  Into  it — upon  the  Thirty-fourth 
Street  side  of  the  enlarged  and  hyphenated 
hotel — were  moved  the  offices  and  accounting 
departments  of  the  combined  establishments. 
An  open  court,  a  twin  to  the  Palm  Garden,  but 
a  full  two  stories  in  height,  was  built  adjoining 
that  room.  And  likewise  a  Fifth  Avenue  res- 
taurant similar  in  size  and  type  and  immediately 
adjoining  the  Fifth  Avenue  restaurant  of  the 
original  Waldorf.  The  men's  cafe  was  moved 
out  of  the  Oak  Room  and  into  the  Astoria,  and 
Mr.  Boldt  conceded  to  it  at  last,  a  standing  bar, 
a  huge  affair  (eventually  four-sided),  which  at 
once  became  a  tremendous  success  and  which 
was  in  no  little  way  responsible  for  the  Wal- 
dorf-Astoria becoming  known  in  New  York  as 
"the  club  of  all  clubs."  In  its  cafe  at  five  in 
the  afternoon  could  ever  be  found  the  represen- 
tative men  of  the  town.  To  that  room  AVall 
Street  adjourned  at  the  close  of  business  down- 
town. And  the  late  tickers  buzzed  with  the 
gossip  of  what  was  being  said  and  done  at  the 
Waldorf  that  evening. 

As  a  final  concession  to  a  really  public  insti- 
tution, there  was  "Peacock  Alley,"  as  some 
irrepressible  reporter  immediately  dubbed  the 
glorious  main  corridor  along  the  Thirty-fourth 


20 


THE  LATE  GEORGE  C.  BOLDT 


21 


Street  side  of  the  hyphenated  hotel.  It*  the 
Waldorf-Astoria  was  "the  club  of  all  clubs" 
of  New  York,  Peacock  Alley  was  at  once  "the 
street  of  all  streets."  Through  it  inarched  the 
smartness  of  the  town — masculine  as  well  as 
feminine.  To  see;  in  Peacock  Alley,  and  to  he 
seen,  in  Peacock  Alley; — that  was  the  proper 
thing.  And  no  one  knew  this  better — or  loved 
it  better,  from  the  bottom  of  his  big  heart — 
than  one  George  C.  Boldt. 

The  Astoria  side  of  the  big  hotel  was  for- 
mally opened  upon  the  evening  of  November  1, 
1897.  Again  there  was  a  great  concert,  and 
again  it  rained — fiercely  and  furiously.  But 
again  the  enthusiasm  of  New  York  society  over 
its  great  toy  refused  to  be  dampened.  Mrs. 
Richard  Irvin  repeated  her  remarkable  success 
of  the  opening  of  the  Waldorf  side  of  the  house. 
This  time  the  proceeds  of  the  concert  were  to 
be  given  to  not  less  than  four  institutions:  the 
Loomis  Sanitarium  for  Consumptives,  the  Ba- 
bies' and  Mothers'  Hospital,  the  Saturday  and 
Sunday  Woman's  Auxiliary  Hospital,  and  the 
Babies'  Ward  and  the  Day  Nursery  at  the  Post- 
Graduate  Hospital. 

The  opening  ceremony  began  in  the  afternoon 
with  a  fairy  spectacle,  The  Realm  of  the  Rose, 
given  by  one  hundred  children  of  well-known 
New  York  families.  In  the  evening  was  the 
more  formal  affair,  again  a  concert — this  time 
by  Anton  Seidl's  orchestra,  which  was  placed 
in  the  Astor  Gallery.  After  the  concert  the 
guests  of  the  evening  went  to  the  great  ball- 
room, where,  upon  its  stage,  Mr.  John  Drew, 
Miss  Maude  Adams  and  their  company  gave 
the  second  act  of  Rosemary,  then  a  raging  New 
York  success.  A  buffet  supper  was  served 
afterwards,  and  again  a  group  of  well-known 
young  men  acted  as  ushers  to  show  the  entire 
house  to  the  guests.  As  a  house-warming  it  was 
a  most  complete  affair.  And  as  an  aid  to 
charity — practically  every  feature  of  it  being 


donated — it    was    a    tremendous  inspiration. 

For  the  next  seventeen  or  eighteen  years  the 
record  of  the  Waldorf-Astoria  reads  as  a  suc- 
cession of  successes.  Distinguished  visitors 
came  to  it — in  greater  numbers  than  ever  be- 
fore. Shortly  before  the  completion  of  the  As- 
toria, that  greatest  of  all  modern  Chinamen- 
Li  Hung  Chang — came  to  visit  the  Waldorf. 
The  memories  of  his  visit  still  linger  in  Thirty- 
third  Street.  And  some  time  after  the  comple- 
tion of  the  newer  part  of  the  house  came  the 
Crown  Prince  of  Siam,  a  pleasant,  boyish  fel- 
low, with  an  unspeakable  interest  in  the  "West- 
ern world. 

But  Mr.  Boldt's  hour  of  greatest  triumph 
arrived  in  the  visit  of  Prince  Henry  of  Prussia 
to  his  hotel,  in  Februan',  1902.  His  pride  on 
that  occasion  was  almost  unbounded.  The  prep- 
arations for  it  were  without  a  parallel.  He 
drilled  the  servants  and  he  re-drilled  them.  He 
rehearsed  them  in  every  detail  of  the  parts  they 
were  to  play  in  the  reception  of  the  hotel's  most 
distinguished  visitor.  Prince  Henry  came  and 
went,  and  the  Waldorf-Astoria  finally  took  his 
visit  as  a  mere  detail  of  its  career.  There  came 
other  visitors,  in  increasing  number.  A  1,000- 
room  hotel  was  not  less  than  a  marvel  in  the 
Xew  York  of  that  day.  The  Grand  Ballroom, 
the  Astor  Gallery  and  all  the  rest  of  the  huge 
public  rooms  were  engaged  night  after  night  for 
weeks  and  for  months  in  advance — many  after- 
noons and  even  mornings  as  well.  The  after- 
theatre  supper  business  was  lessening,  although 
ever  and  ever  so  slightly,  as  the  center  of  the 
theater  district  moved  up  and  away  from  Thirty- 
fourth  Street.  But  the  business  of  the  neigh- 
borhood grew,  and  still  is  growing,  by  leaps  and 
by  bounds.  Which  means  that  luncheon  has  be- 
come a  vast  meal  at  the  Waldorf-Astoria. 

Then  the  blackness  of  real  tragedv,  the  death 
of  Mr.  Boldt  in  1916.  Mrs.  Boldt  had  died 
some  years  before.    Her  passing  was  a  terrible 


2.3 


blow  to  her  husband — the  termination  of  a  per- 
fect partnership.  From  her  death  he  never 
really  recovered.  He  strove  to  get  back  into  the 
older  order  of  things,  but  never  entirely  success- 
fully. And  his  own  passing  came  finally  as  no 
great  astonishment  to  those  of  his  cronies  who 
had  known  of  the  deep  attachment  between  this 
super-hotel  man  and  his  wife. 


Here  was  a  real  blow  *  for  the  Waldorf- 
Astoria  to  weather.  Now  it  needed  all  of  its 
prestige  to  come  through  rough  sailing.  The 
skipper  was  gone.  For  a  little  time  the  ship  had 
a  hard  battle  ahead  of  her.  That  she  finally 
weathered  it  was  due  more  than  any  one  thing 
to  the  loyalty  of  her  crew — from  Oscar  right 
down  to  the  humblest  employee  of  the  institu- 
tion. Her  graduates — Hilliard  and  Marshall 
and  Amer  and  Woods  and  Nulle  and  others,  too 
— came  loyally  to  her  assistance.  She  pulled 
through.  Another  George  Boldt  came.  But 
young  Boldt  has  never  had  the  taste  for  hotel- 
keeping  that  his  father  possessed.  He  preferred 
to  seek  other  pursuits.  Oscar  remained.  Oscar 
still  remains.    Oscar  is  on  the  job. 

A  new  captain  has  come  up  on  the  bridge. 
Three  years  ago,  when  the  younger  generation 
of  Boldt  announced  its  intention  to  withdraw 
from  the  management  of  the  Waldorf-Astoria, 
there  was  a.  deal  of  doubt  and  perplexity  as  to 
the  future  of  the  house.  Then  it  was  that  a 
shrewd  and  strategic  move  was  made  by  its 
several  owners.  Down  Thirty-third  and  Thirty- 
fourth  Streets,  but  a  short  block  away,  at 
Broadway  and  Sixth  Avenue,  a  huge  new  hotel 
had  arisen,  but  a  decade  before.  This  house — 
the  McAlpin — was  under  the  management  of 
Mr.  L.  M.  Boomer.  He,  too,  possesses  a  rare 
de  gree  of  the  imaginative  faculty  that  was  of 
such  great  aid  to  Boldt.  And  he  attracted  the 
attention  of  General  Coleman  du  Pont  whose 


25 


26 


great  constructive  genius  has  been  repeatedly- 
shown  in  recent  years,  not  only  in  the  upbuild- 
ing of  the  huge  powder  industry  that  bears  his 
family's  name,  but  in  that  monumental  down- 
town enterprise,  the  Equitable  Building.  Be- 
cause of  the  immediate  success  of  the  McAlpin 
under  Boomer,  General  du  Pont  visualized  the 
reincarnation  of  the  Waldorf.  A  man  of  action, 
he  said,  instantly: 

"Boomer,  I  will  take  it,  if  you  will  run  it." 

Boomer  agreed.  He  has  shown  a  real  ability 
in  bringing  modern  efficiency  methods  into  the 
hotel  business,  which  has  not  "been  without  its 
opportunity  for  them.  This  combination  of 
imagination  and  common  sense  has  brought 
Boomer  forward  pretty  rapidly  in  the  hotel 
world.  In  conjunction  with  the  genius  and  the 
great  prestige  of  General  du  Pont,  it  brought 
him,  a  little  less  than  three  years  ago,  into  the 
overlordship  of  the  Waldorf-Astoria,  and  then, 
shortly  afterwards,  into  that  of  two  famous 
out-of-town  houses:  the  Bellevue-Stratford,  of 
Philadelphia  (successor  to  Boldt's  little  Belle- 
vue),  and  the  historic  Willard's,  of  Washington. 

Mr.  Boomer  elected  not  to  take  direct  manage- 
ment of  the  Waldorf-Astoria,  not  at  least  in  the 
sense  that  Mr.  Boldt  had  managed  it.  His  other 
business  interests — he  is  today  a  product  of 
that  remarkable  American  tendency  to  consoli- 
date every  conceiv-able  form  of  business — -would 
not  permit  that.  But  he  selected  for  the  Boldt 
post  a  hotel  man  possessing  very  many  of  the 
Boldt  qualities — Roy  Carruthers,  who  had  had 
a  fine  preliminary  schooling  as  managing  di- 
rector, first,  of  the  Palace  Hotel  in  San  Fran- 
cisco, and  then  of  the  new  Pennsylvania  in  New 
York.  Carruthers  is  also  a  swift  maker  of 
friends.  Yet  back  of  his  ability  to  smile  and  to 
hand-shake  is  a  quick,  sure,  business  judgment 
that  registers  and  registers  right — almost  in- 
variably.   Under  the  two  years  of  his  adminis- 


27 


2S 


tration  of  the  Waldorf-Astoria  that  have  al- 
ready elapsed,  the  house  has  come  back  quickly 
into  its  old-time  vigor  and  public  esteem. 


AY  hat  is  to  be  the  future  of  the  Waldorf- 
Astoria? 

Time — and  time  alone — can  answer  that  ques- 
tion. Mr.  Boldt  had  a  way  of  saying  that  forty 
years  was  the  measure  of  the  life  of  a  first- 
class  hotel  in  New  York;  at  any  rate  as  a  really 
first  class  hotel.  But  his  estimate  was  gauged 
largely  by  the  ceaseless  uptown  growth  of  Man- 
hattan. That  factor  has  now  been  changed — ■ 
very  largely.  The  business  section  which  has 
been  in  the  process  of  a  steady  movement  north- 
ward for  considerably  more  than  a  century  has 
now  come  to  Central  Park.  That  great  open 
space  forms  a  natural  barrier  to  it.  To  SDlit 
upon  both  sides  of  the  Park  obviouslv  is  not 
going  to  be  satisfactory.  The  only  answer  is 
that  the  great  business  section  of  Manhattan 
Island  must  remain  south  of  Fifty-ninth  Street. 
Other  factors  have  interjected  themselves  into 
the  situation — the  placing  of  the  rapid  transit 
subways,  the  multiplication  of  bridges  and  tun- 
nels across  and  under  the  North  and  East 
Rivers,  and  last,  but  not  least,  the  building  of 
the  great  Pennsylvania  Station  at  Seventh  Ave- 
nue and  Thirty-third  Street.  Considering  all 
of  these  things  in  their  real  importance,  it  now 
begins  to  look  as  if  the  great  hotel  and  retail 
shopping  section  of  New  York  was  to  "stay 
put"  for  a  considerable  number  of  years,  at 
any  rate. 

The  house  itself  seemingly  was  built  to  last 
for  all  time.  Since  the  completion  of  its  final 
half,  many  other  palatial  hotels  have  sprung 
up  upon  the  Island  of  Manhattan.  The  most 
of  these  have  been  built  upon  the  success  of  the 
Waldorf-Astoria.    Very  truly  has  that  famous 


29 


30 


tavern  been  called  "the  mother  of  hotels."  Yet 
the  mother  holds  her  own  amongst  her  children. 
Middle  age  has  only  served  to  bring  her  great 
dignity,  to  add  to  the  soft  maturity  of  her 
beauty.  Her  great  public  rooms  are  as  lovely 
as  they  were  in  the  day  that  first  they  were 
opened.  The  furnishings  and  the  decorations 
have  been  vastly  modernized.  In  many  ways 
they  have  been  improved.  The  automobile  made 
the*  famous  porte-cochere  of  the  Astoria,  built 
in  the  carriage  days  of  1897,  an  impossibility. 
In  its  place  has  come  the  lovely  Italian  room, 
perhaps  the  most  charming  candy  shop  in  all 
the  world. 

The  future  of  the  Waldorf-Astoria  ? 

To  prophesy  far  into  the  future  of  any  insti- 
tution in  a  great  and  rapidly  changing  city  like 
New  York  is  sheerest  folly.  But  for  a  decade — 
two  decades — three  decades  to  come,  the  future 
of  the  Waldorf  seems  assured.  It  will  continue 
to  be  the  house  of  good  service,  the  house  of 
good  eating,  the  house  of  good  comfort  of 
every  sort.  To  the  vastness  of  its  acquired 
prestige  it  steadily  is  adding  new  laurels.  It 
is  one  of  the  few  hotels  in  America  known 
internationally.  In  1893,  Eulalie,  princess  of 
old  Spain,  came  to  stop  under  its  roof;  nine 
years  later  came  the  affable  Henry  of  Prussia; 
just  yesterday,  it  seems,  came  the  King  and  the 
Queen  of  the  Belgians — heroic  figures  of  the 
most  terrible  war  of  all  history.  And  upon 
their  heels,  that  boyish  young  Briton  who  seems 
to  be  destined  to  be  the  reigning  monarch  of 
the  most  powerful  kingdom  upon  the  face  of 
the  earth.  All  these,  and  hundreds  of  others 
from  ovei\>eas.  And  from  the  United  States 
the  tens  and  hundreds  of  thousands.  In  the 
vast  accumulation  of  the  carefully  preserved 
registers  of  the  hotel  is  the  real  Who's  Who  of 
America.    There  is  not  a  State  that  is  missing 


31 


in  that  list,  and  hardly  a  town  or  a  village  from 
all  the  way  across  the  land. 

The  future  of  the  Waldorf-Astoria? 

The  question  now  is  answered.  It  seemingly 
is  as  firmly  assured  as  is  its  past,  and  of  that 
past  you  have  just  had  the  brief  telling. 


32 


THE  TAVERN  TOPICS  PRESS 
LONG    ISLAND    CITY,    N.  Y. 


AFFILIATIONS 

under  the  ownership  of 
(Boomer  -  nr  Poxt  Properties  Corporation) 

The  Wai  dorf-Astoria       .    .    New  York 

The  Bei.lf.vtte-Str  atford   .  Philadelphia 

The  \Yillard   .    .    .   Washington,  D.  C. 

The  Wixusob  Montreal 

Louis  Sherry  Restaurants  &  Tea  Shops 
New  York 
Paris 

Cai-e  Savarix,  120  Broadway,  New  York 
nlso  operating 
Pex xsyevaxia  Static x  R est at  ra  n  ts 
East  from  Pittsburgh 


